The European Chicken Commitment challenge: toward the use of novel genotypes with slower-growth rate for meat production

PRIN 2022 Petracci

Abstract

The intense selection process for higher growth rate and breast meat yield carried out in the past decades on fast-growing (FG) broiler chickens has determined some health and welfare issues as well as product quality alterations, eliciting concerns from consumers and regulatory agencies. In this context, the European Chicken Commitment (ECC) has defined specific standards with the aim to improve animal welfare, production sustainability and food safety in the poultry meat chain. Thus, the aim of the project is to characterize ECC-approved chicken strains in terms of productive performance, metabolic traits, animal welfare indicators and product quality, according to genotype-related factors (kinetic activity) as well as to environmental conditions (heat stress exposure) and nutritional regimens (lysine-to-metabolizable energy ratio).

Project details

Unibo Team Leader: Massimiliano Petracci

Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Agro-Alimentari

Coordinator:
Università  degli Studi di PERUGIA(Italy)

Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 70.380,00
Project Duration in months: 24
Start Date: 12/10/2023
End Date: 28/02/2026

Funding bodies' logos